Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the northern city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite an intensifying Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group. News of the advance came as the...

U.S. President Barack Obama will overhaul Washington's approach to supporting Syrian rebel forces following this year's deeply troubled launch of a U.S. military training program, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday. Carter hinted the new approach would focus more on enabling forces...

(Translation by Yusra Ahmed) Zaman Al Wasl has been informed by sources within the National Coalition for the revolutionary forces opposition that a breach of the statement issued by the political body of the coalition and the fighting groups on ground in regard to rejecting the four working...

Islamic State fighters have seized Syrian villages on the outskirts of Aleppo from rival insurgent fighters, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite Russian air strikes that Moscow says have targeted the militant group. Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps said separately one of...

Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its contribution to building democracy after the Jasmine Revolution in 2011, the Nobel Committee said. The quartet is made up of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT), the Tunisian Confederation of...

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general has been killed near Aleppo, where he was advising the Syrian army on their battle against ISIS fighters, the guards said in a statement Friday. General Hossein Hamedani was killed late Thursday, the statement said. Iran is the main regional ally of...

The United Nations on Thursday proposed to a national unity government to Libya's warring factions meant to end their conflict, but any deal must overcome resistance from hardliners and pass a vote in their rival parliaments to succeed. Four years after the fall of Muammar...

A car bomb exploded Thursday in a rebel-held town in the northern province of Aleppo, killing at least ten people and leaving dozens wounded, a monitor group said. The Syrian Network for Human Rights said at least 10 civilians have lost their lives when a rigged car exploded in a marketplace in...

  Despite living in hiding and fearing for her life, Syrian journalist Kholoud Waleed persists in reporting on the suffering and atrocities inflicted on her fellow countrymen in the long-running civil war. The 31-year-old, who has been targeted by both government and militant forces, set...

Rebels claim that at least one Russian helicopter was downed in Hama province on Thursday where a major Syrian regime offensive is underway. Fighting between Syrian regime forces and rebel factions continued on Thursday as a government offensive on opposition-held Hama and Idlib continued for a...

He stood on the mud, crows cawing overhead, pointing at unmarked graves. "Here's a mother with her baby. And here's another young woman. Over there, that's a 60-year-old man." Buried beneath low mounds of earth, facing Mecca, lay Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees who drowned...

A number of cruise missiles launched from a Russian ship and aimed at targets in Syria have crashed in Iran, two U.S. officials told CNN Thursday. Monitoring by U.S. military and intelligence assets has concluded that at least four missiles crashed as they flew over Iran. One official said...

Four people, including an Israeli soldier, were stabbed and wounded near a military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Thursday, police and ambulance sources said, as a rash of such Palestinian attacks spread to Israel's commercial capital. The assailant was shot and killed by...

Attackers have shot at a Tunisian sports magnate and legislator in a city where an Islamic extremist killed 38 tourists earlier this year. Ridha Charfeddine was not hurt in Thursday's attack, according to senior security official Rafik Chelli. The reason for the attack is unclear. Charfeddine...

Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich has won the Nobel Prize for Literature for her portrayal of life in the former Soviet Union which the Swedish Academy said was "a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Alexievich's work includes chronicles of the lives of Soviet...

Vladimir Putin turned 63 this week with his now traditional display of sporting prowess, and an announcement that Russian naval vessels had launched a wave of missiles against Islamic State in Syria. The Russian leader has never appeared more confident and his grip on power...

World soccer chief Sepp Blatter and European boss Michel Platini were suspended on Thursday in a deepening corruption scandal, decapitating the leadership of a sport facing criminal investigations on both sides of the Atlantic. Blatter, the Swiss who has been president of world...

Eight people died and six others were injured when a bus hurtled off a road and into a gorge in Ecuador's southern Andes, security officials said Thursday. The Ministry of Public Health said the vehicle plunged some 250 meters (820 feet) after going off the road Wednesday in Canar province....

Syrian rebels on Thursday shot down two helicopters, including one Russian, in the northern countryside of Hama province, a monitoring group and local sources said, as Russia continued air support for Basjar al-Assad forces fighting on the ground. The two helicopters was downed near the village...

Islamic State fighters have killed three Assyrian Christian captives who were among nearly 200 Christians abducted earlier this year in the northeastern province of al-Hasaka, Reuters said Thursday. The three men were killed late last month but the news emerged this week when a video showing...